Dazzling the entire Madison Square Garden with a career night of his own, Immanuel Quickley is happy to lead the New York Knicks to a 137-115 Tuesday victory over the Houston Rockets.
Quickley exploding for a career-high 40 markers propelled the Knicks to halt their challenging three-game losing skid, as they considered it as a must-win game facing one of the league’s worst teams.
“Winning definitely solves a lot of things,” Quickley said postgame. “We don’t want to be satisfied though. We knew the Rockets were going to come in free-flowing, firing. Very skilled team. So, we knew we had to be on our P’s and Q’s, especially defensively and I think we did that.”
Starting in place once again of Jalen Brunson, who is out with his sprained right hand, Quickley shot a highly efficient 14-for-18 from the field and dished out nine assists.
Per ESPN’s Stats & Info, he is the first Knick since Nate Robinson in 2009 to finish a game with 40 points, five assists and delivers 80 percent of his shots.
With Brunson out, he surely made his job to step up and provide a needed scoring punch to power New York over Houston.
“Everybody has to pick it up when one of your best players is out, whether that be scoring, defense, leadership,” Quickley said. “You miss a lot of things when basically an All-Star is out. Everybody just has to be a little bit better, I think.”
Julius Randle chipped in 26 points, while RJ Barrett got 19 to contribute as the Knicks elevated their record to 43-33.
They are set to face the Miami Heat on Wednesday, with the race towards East’s fifth seed getting even tighter.
